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US Midterm Elections Discussion
November 4th will be election day in the U.S. Though the presidential race is still forming, this midterm election has lots of close races that may give a hint about the likely outcome in 2016. Many pundits and pollsters see a strong chance that Republicans will gain a majority in the Senate in Tuesday's election. Think of the discussion attached to this post as the place to discuss the election: candidates, political advertising, voting technology, and the wisdom of voter ID laws. If you are voting, this chart of poll closing times might be useful. (And, as with the similar post from 10 years ago today, you can take a look at the current poll to see what the Zeitgeist looks like for Slashdot readers, and mentally fill in the past tense, if you're one of the many early voters; not much room in the poll question field.)
Freedom of the press has taken a huge hit under the Obama admin.
Although one could argue that the wheels were set in motion during Bush's watch, it was under Obama's Napolitano that we lost the freedom to not be groped or oggled at the airport.
sig: sauer
Because we are about to regain some freedom by telling the Democrat party to STFU and sit down?!
Wow. If it was up to me, I'd bitch slap both parties. The problem isn't Democrats or Republicans, the problem is Democrats AND Republicans. Both parties are very incompetent. Instead of trying to help the people, both parties are more worried about the agenda's the superpac's are paying them for.
Be seeing you...
Why do you idiots only have a memory lasting six years? Patriot Act was one of the worst violations of freedom as was the massive expansion of the NSA and creation of the TSA. Those happened on the previous watch. Stop being stupid.
Why do you idiots only have a memory lasting six years? Patriot Act was one of the worst violations of freedom as was the massive expansion of the NSA and creation of the TSA. Those happened on the previous watch. Stop being stupid.
Actually the Patriot Act was extended by Obama in 2011, extended just long enough to cover his 2nd term. Obama owns the Patriot Act. More importantly, Obama **uses** the Patriot Act. He could have ordered the Justice Department, the FBI and all the other agencies under executive branch control to stop using it, but he **chose not too**.
I'll note that the Dems changed the rules so you don't need the 60 votes to override for TWO things: A) Judicial nominations below the Supreme Court level and B) Executive nominations below the cabinet level and in no other situations.
There were no changes to the filibuster for legislation (though personally I'd have loved to see it change from 60 votes to stop debate over to 40 votes to continue debate), and Mitch McConnell has indicated in the past that he doesn't see changing that should he become Majority Leader this fall.
As for the filibuster, I'd love to see it change just on the basis of "If you say you want to continue debate, don't say that then leave town." I'm fine with continuing "debate" (not that they ever actually debate the items they're delaying/killing), but by god if you're going to do it you'd better care enough to actually stick around.
fencepost
just a little off
The odds of more shutdowns in 2015-16 are high.
The 2013 shutdown came about because the House Republicans refused to do their job by producing a budget, sending negotiators to the joint House-Senate conference, and voting for the COMPROMISED budget. After a 16-day government shutdown and $20B in damages to the economy, the House Republicans accepted a budget deal that they would have gotten anyway if they done their job in the first place. If the Republicans shut down the government in the next two years, I fully expect President Hillary to take them to the woodshed.
And when the sample size increases, the trend moves toward equilibrium. I think this is a great example of someone not understanding statistics.
In an article that starts with an anecdote from 1986, and evaluating a Republican worry "Ever since 1986", why is the data only examined from 1998 ?
In 16 years of data for 50 states, there should be about (16/6) * 2 + (16/4) for each state, or about 266 elections. That's 6 year Senate terms, and 4 year terms for governors. 20 out of a subset of 27 hardly seems relevant - that's 1% out of 10% of the sample size.
If we take this quote at the bottom:
And combine it with the opening salvo:
It is fairly self explanatory.
The part that doesn't make sense is all the time spent on a case of Chicago voter fraud from 1982. The article characterizes it as "at least 100,000 fraudulent votes had been cast in Chicago alone", implying there is more to the story. The linked article is all about Chicago.
That last paragraph makes me really suspicious of this crackpot. That I can't access the data to check for missed analysis opportunities kinda bothers me. Maybe he's not a crackpot, let's see if I can find something to support that?
He basically says "Don't read too much into this" right there. But you apparently did.